A Brief History of Antique American Hooked Rugs

Hooked rugs are part of the tradition perfected and adopted on its own, by the North Americans. The materials, designs, and motifs employed are entirely different, and in that vein, are treated as indigenous art forms. 

The first hooked rugs in North America were probably made in the eighteenth century in Maine, New Hampshire, and the areas of the Eastern United States. This art culminated in the Victorian era, expanding out of New England and into the rest of the United States. 

Women executed hooked rugs in isolation in their homes or in environments much like quilting bees by either using strips of cloth scraps from clothes, rags and sacks, or spun wool. 

Earlier pieces were made on hand woven linen or hemp foundations but were quickly superseded by burlap, widely available by the mid 19th Century. 

The rug hooker, with her right hand above the pattern, and the material scraps in her left hand underneath, pushed the hook down through the burlap, catching it on the cloth strip and drawing it back up to form a loop on the top of the burlap.

Loops about half an inch long were formed, which were cut to create a pile. There could be up to ten miles of quarter-inch strips in a rug and take more than two years to complete a nine-foot rug.